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Fifteen Steps To Do Your Own Household Mold Removal & Remediation
Too much household mold growth indoors is very dangerous and unsafe
health-wise for residents. Here are fifteen steps to do your own household
mold removal.
These fifteen household mold removal and remediation procedures are
excellent techniques for removing and remediating household mold from wood
and other cellulose-based building materials such as OSB board, drywall,
plaster, plywood, wood, ceiling tile, carpeting and padding, as well as mold
growing on organic dirt deposited or landed on concrete and masonry surfaces
such as bricks, blocks, and poured concrete walls and floors.
For household mold removal of mold growth from personal possessions such as
furniture, appliances, clothing, please follow the detailed mold
decontamination tips for each different type of personal property, as
explained in mold expert Phillip Fry’s do it yourself ebook
Do-It-BEST-Yourself Mold Prevention, Inspection, Testing, and Remediation,
available for email attachment delivery to you from
Mold Mart.
1. Locate and fix all sources of mold-causing water problems such as
recurring flooding, plumbing leaks, leaky roofs or siding, blocked
air-conditioning condensation drain lines, and high indoor humidity (e.g.,
above 60%).
2.
Find and locate all visible mold growth in the entire home or building
by thorough, all-around visual mold inspection. Use a strong flashlight and
your sense of smell to help locate mold infestations. "You may suspect
hidden mold if a building smells moldy, but you cannot see the source, or if
you know there has been water damage and residents are reporting health
problems. Mold may be hidden in places such as the back side of dry wall,
wallpaper, or paneling, the top side of ceiling tiles, the underside of
carpets and pads, etc. Other possible locations of hidden mold include areas
inside walls around pipes (with leaking or condensing pipes), the surface of
walls behind furniture (where condensation forms), inside ductwork, and in
roof materials above ceiling tiles (due to roof leaks or insufficient
insulation)," advises the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
3. When doing mold removal and mold remediation, please wear proper
personal protection including: (a) N-95 breathing mask (inexpensive at
drug stores, hardware stores, and home improvement stores); (b) disposable
vinyl gloves; (c) eye goggles (with no air holes---buy ChemSplash type of
goggles at a hardware store or home improvement store); (d) baseball cap or
other head covering; (e) coveralls (washable or disposable painting paper
coveralls from a paint store), or, better yet, Tyvek™ paper suits with built
in hood and booties. If the mold levels are high, instead of a N-95
breathing mask, use a 3M full face respirator with organic vapor filters.
After each mold remediation session, discard disposable protection items,
wash washable items, and thoroughly and immediately shower with a thorough
hair washing and body scrub to remove any landed mold spores from your body.
4. Contain the moldy work area (and thus contain the toxic mold spores
that will be released into the air by opening up mold-contaminated areas)
before beginning household mold removal in the mold-afflicted areas by
using wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling plastic sheeting as containment walls.
How to make effective mold containment walls, including a mold-secure entry
way into the mold containment area, is explained in detail in the ebook
Do-It-Best-Yourself Mold Prevention, Inspection, Testing, and Remediation.
Use 6 mill thick, clear plastic sheeting that you can buy at a hardware
store or home improvement center. A photograph of a mold containment wall in
use is provided at the bottom of this page.
5.
After the installation of air tight mold containment walls, dry the work
area
(especially if still wet from flooding or a now fixed water leak or roof
leak) with one or more large dehumidifiers or an industrial size
dehumidifier or large fans located right in front of open windows to exhaust
airborne mold spores to the outdoors. Improper fan drying (fans pushing air
around inside the house or building) can spread mold spores to cross
contaminate an entire building and its heating/cooling system.
6. Inside the mold containment area, use a large fan in the window
to exhaust air directly outside on a continuous basis to expel airborne
mold spores and remediation-caused dust---or better yet, use an industrial
hepa filter to filter out mold, with a flexible hose directly venting the
exhaust air flow to the outdoors. You need to exhaust more air to the
outside than is entering the containment area to create negative air
pressure. (You know you have negative air pressure when the plastic
containment sheets are being sucked inward toward the work area rather than
bulging outward away from the work area.). A photograph of a mold
containment wall in use with negative air pressure is provided at the bottom
of this page.
7.
Remove visible mold growth by scrubbing it off with a hand-held hard
bristle brush dripping with boric acid powder (two cups per gallon of warm
water) mix. You can also use a hand-held wire brush, a wire brush
attachment for an electric drill, hand sander, electric sander, hand-held
planer, and power planer to remove mold growth from building materials. If
you cannot remove all of the mold growth to a visibly mold-free condition,
remove, discard, and replace the moldy building materials. Do not use
chlorine bleach (sodium hypochlorite) to kill mold or disinfect moldy areas.
Bleach is not an effective or lasting killer of toxic mold
growth and mold spores on and inside porous, cellulose building materials
such as wood timbers, drywall, plasterboard, particleboard, plywood, plywood
substitutes, ceiling tiles, and carpeting/padding. Learn more about why
bleach doesn't work at
bleach and mold.
8.
Inspect for hidden mold growth and mold test inside, above, and below each
water-damaged or water-penetrated ceilings, walls, and floors.
For
mold investigation inside such areas, you can cut small (one inch by one
inch or bigger) core dry wall samples. Remove and look in the middle and
back of each core for visible mold growth. You can use a flashlight to look
inside each hole for mold growth, and you can also use a one meter long
fiber optics inspection cable to look in all directions inside each
inspection hole.
9.
Use do-it-yourself
mold test kits to test room air and the outward air flow from each
heating/cooling duct register for the possible presence of elevated levels
of airborne mold spores. Include doing one outdoor mold control test
(against which to compare indoor mold test results) outside your home or
building with the test kit being at least five feet out from any roof or
porch overhang. If there is a serious mold problem anywhere in a home or
other building, airborne mold spores from those points of mold contamination
will enter into the heating/cooling ducts and/or equipment to mold
contaminate both, and thus the entire building through the outward air flow
from the duct registers.
10. Do quarterly high
ozone treatment of your air conditioning system. Because most room
air conditioners and heating/cooling systems have internal mold growth,
every three months you should use your own high
ozone generator to input large volumes of high ozone (at least 14,000 mg
per hour of ozone) for one hour into the fresh air supply intake of each
window air conditioner, as well as your heating/cooling system to kill all
air conditioning mold and bacteria. During ozone treatment of your air
conditioners and heating/cooling equipment and ducts, there must be NO
people, pets, or plants inside your home or building, or for one hour
afterwards.
11. Do ozone blasting of your attic, basement, crawl space, enclosed
garage, and all of rooms for one hour at least every three months to
kill mold spores and bacteria throughout your home or building. As mentioned
above, there must be NO people, pets, or plants inside your home or building
during the ozone treatment or for one hour afterwards.
12. Use a mold fogging machine to fog boric acid powder (one to two cups
per gallon of warm water) for one hour at least annually into your
heating/cooling equipment and ducts to kill mold and to coat the insides
of your heating/cooling equipment and ducts with mold-preventative boric
acid crystals (left inside after natural drying). The best fogger quality
for your money is the Curtis Hurricane model from
http://www.dynafog.com. The best quality boric acid powder is available
from
Mold Mart. When you boric acid powder into the return air duct while the
system is running on fan ventilation, you can get substantial amounts of
boric delivered throughout the heating/cooling equipment and ducts.
13.
If any occupants are experiencing any possible toxic
mold health symptoms,
or if
there is a strong smell of mold, or if there are visible signs of major
mold growth
anywhere in the building, or if the building tests positive for elevated
levels of airborne mold spores, the occupants should move temporarily
to a mold-safe place until after successful mold remediation and clearance
mold testing documents that it is safe to return.
14.
Occupants moving out during mold remediation should not take any clothing,
personal possessions, furnishings, furniture, or equipment
until
after such items have been effectively mold decontaminated outdoors (or in a
clean room built from plastic sheeting) to avoid mold cross contamination of
the temporary or new living or working quarters. How to properly mold clean
each type of personal effect and personal property is explained in the mold
expert Phillip Fry’s in depth ebook
Do-It-Best-Yourself Mold Inspection, Testing, Remediation, and Prevention,
available for email attachment delivery from
Mold Mart.
15. Do
not paint over mold problems.
Mold loves to eat paint as a snack food. Don’t expect to kill mold
successfully by using paint containing a mildicide [too mild to kill
existing toxic mold infestation] or with a
paint
primer sold to hide water damage stains. Do not rely on
Kilz to kill mold or anything---it does not kill mold, and the
product is NOT an EPA-registered fungicide. Kilz is only a product to hide
or camouflage defects like water damage stains prior to painting over
problem areas.
Questions or Need FREE Mold Help?
If
you have any household mold removal or mold remediation questions, please
email them to mold expert Phillip Fry for his FREE answer and help.
Phillip’s email address is
envirodangers@yahoo.com. You can also phone Phillip at his
international management office in Malaysia, phone number
6017-898-5048,
after 7 p.m. eastern USA/Canada time.
©EnviroDetectives™
2011. ALL RIGHTS RESEVED.
Photograph of the inside of a thick plastic sheeting containment wall.
Notice
that it is bulging inward into the mold remediation area because the plastic is
being pulled
inward (toward the mold remediation area) by the negative
air pressure
maintained inside the mold work area. |